For 4 decades, DTCC operated the only “golden record” of who owns what in America. Every share. Every bond. Every Treasury. Guarding $100T in assets.
On December 11, the SEC handed it the keys to the future. With a historic No-Action Letter, the regulator didn’t just allow the DTCC to experiment with blockchain. It allowed it to tokenise the entire U.S. capital market. [Release]
On December 11, 2025, the SEC issued a “No-Action Letter” to the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), authorising its subsidiary to launch a production-grade service for tokenising real-world assets (RWAs). The rollout is slated for H2 2026. [Letter] [Platform]
Be smart: DTCC is doing two things at once. First, it’s protecting its job as the main place that keeps track of who owns what, so that role doesn’t get broken up across different blockchains. Second, it’s making a play to run the show when money and assets start moving on-chain, so it stays at the center of how markets work.
Zooming in: For years, U.S. regulators kept crypto in a gray zone. Chair Atkins is now scrapping that approach and replacing it with clear rules under a new effort called “Project Crypto.” His core view: what matters is the economics of a product, not whether it lives on paper, a database, or a blockchain.
